life on planet earth on Pain and Growth

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way. But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne'er a word said she; But oh, the things I learned fro...

In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life…. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for pe...

Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as i...

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.

The truth is, that more spiritual progress is made through failure and tears than success and laughter.

We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

We should neither court suffering nor complain about it. Instead, we should see it as one of the means God chooses to employ in order to make us increasingly useful to our Master.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.